Two reels good, one reel bad...

Rating: 7/10 (1 November 2002)

Once again the policy of Sneak Previewing anything remotely horror on Halloween gives you the power to ruin the film for everyone else. I say this, as there may be some Spoilers ahead.
The premise is all well and good, with the populace infected with a viral form of Road Rage (to quote Danny Boyle), decimating it within a month to a few survivors. The intro gets to the heart of the matter, as Animal Rights activists unintentionally unleash the virus in a stylish, and well edited, sequence.
However, the film really kicks in as Jim wakes up in a hospital, with the key slid under the locked door. As he wanders the halls, the place is dead - no people, no sound, even the phones are dead. Soon he is on the streets of London, desolate with no signs of life - a sequence worth the entrance fee alone, as Westminster Bridge is covered in discarded trinkets, piles of money lie around The Bank of England, with overturned buses lining the roads, and the centre of Piccadilly Circus awash with missing posters. Soon, Jim seeks sanctuary in a church, and the action begins in a typical way - an "Infected" Priest approaches him, much in the same way as every single zombie film has an encounter with a lone zombie, and the protagonist has no idea of what is happening, even apologising for striking it down.
Skipping a few plot details, eventually Jim and Selina meet with father and daughter Frank and Hannah, and find out there may well be safety in Manchester with a group of soldiers, and decide to get out of London - in Frank's black cab, including another great sequence occurs in the Dartford Tunnel, but I won't spoil it - even if it is in the trailer.
However, once they reach Manchester (a burnt out ruin), the film starts to unravel, skipping the interesting premise of the first hour and turning into Day of the Dead pretty damn quick - the characters of the soldiers is very similar (if a tad more Cockney), and they have a pet "Infected" (like Bub the zombie), among many others, at which point you start to question if the first half was just liberally borrowing from Omega Man/Quiet Earth/Rabid/The Stand.
Also, in the second half, the characterisation goes to Hell. Many of the soldiers are cut & paste, with the exception of Sgt Farris and Christopher Eccleston's Major West.
As a recommendation, the first hour stands up well, but the last third suffers from a feeling of being tacked on and ripped off. Personally, I blame writer Alex Garland, who can't write without a gory meltdown to finish, such as the book version of The Beach.
All in all, the film works up to a point (ie, when in London), but as soon as the soldiers are introduced, everything falls away - even the DV camerawork starts to look just ugly, when a few minutes before, in the sequence in the field, it looked beautiful.
Seven out of Ten, with an asterix marked "Could Do Better."